Adam Searing, Town Council member, has been the lone Council Member on the Chapel Hill Board to continue to call for a clean-up of the coal ash dump.
The new EPA report about the toxicity of coal ash has caught the attention of the Chapel Hill Town Council, as well as Friends of Bolin Creek who first raised the alarm and asked for a cleanup of the coal ash dump in a petition to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2014. Adam Searing, Town Council member, has been the lone Council Member on the Chapel Hill Board to continue to call for a clean-up of the coal ash dump. Lisa Sorg of Newsline, the Local Reporter, and the local TV station WRAL have covered the recent story.
Lisa Sorg, the respected environmental reporter, writes, “Coal Ash More Hazardous than Previously Thought?”
https://ncnewsline.com/2024/01/05/coal-ash-more-hazardous-than-previously-known-epa-says-could-alter-chapel-hill-cleanup-plan/
Other stories are found here:
- The Local Reporter, Michelle Cassell, “Coal Ash More Hazardous than Previously Reported”
- WRAL “Recent Report on Coal Ash Heighten Cleanup Concerns”.
https://www.wral.com/story/recent-report-on-coal-ash-dangers-heighten-cleanup-concerns/21230289/
Since 2013, Chapel Hill has been grappling with what to do with the mountain of coal ash that was rediscovered underneath the present Chapel Hill Police building. It is likely that UNC trucked the coal ash to this site in the 1970’s as the residue from UNC’s coal plant operations. Several years ago, the Town Council decided instead to enter the North Carolina Brownfields Program that allows polluted sites to be utilized while leaving contamination in place if certain standards are met.
When Chapel Hill proposed affordable housing units on the coal ash site, Council member Searing joined with Friends of Bolin Creek to oppose housing as a health hazard. Since then, the Town has dropped the concept of building housing for now and has continued with its plan to build a parking deck and a municipal services center composed of town offices under North Carolina’s Brownfields program. Council member Searing has continued to call for a cleanup of the site before the property is developed. Based on the new information from EPA, Friends of Bolin Creek is asking the Town to investigate further the risks of exposure to radioactivity and arsenic and to remove a significant amount of coal ash from the hillside as part of any redevelopment plan for the site.
On January 9th. 2023, Nick Torrey from Southern Environmental Law Center, public health expert Pamela Schultz, and Friends of Bolin Creek wrote the Council to highlight the EPA findings since the Town of Chapel Hill is negotiating with the NC Department of Environmental Quality to forge an agreement that will govern what the Town can build under the Brownfields program on the Coal Ash site. This letter is a public document and can be found here.
2024-01-09 Letter re EPA Risk Assessments
Once Chapel Hill and the Department of Environmental Quality have finished the draft agreement, the public can comment.